Christmas Eve is also tonight and is frequently when families go to candle light

services as a family.

Some open presents on the eve and some on Christmas morn.This

is the celebration of the birth of Jesus.

Kwanzaa begins December 26 and runs through January 1

The greetings during Kwanzaa are in Swahili. Swahili is a Pan-African language and is chosen to reflect African Americans’ commitment to the whole of Africa and African culture rather than to a specific ethnic or national group or culture. The greetings are to reinforce awareness of and commitment to the Seven Principles. It is: “Habari gani?” and the answer is each of the principles for each of the days of Kwanzaa, i.e., “Umoja”, on the first day, “Kujichagulia”, on the second dayand so on.

Gifts are given mainly to children, but must always include a book and a heritage symbol. The book is to emphasize the African value and tradition of learning stressed since ancient Egypt, and the heritage symbol to reaffirm and reinforce the African commitment to tradition and history.

x

x

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The colors of Kwanzaa are black, red and green as noted above and can be utilized in decorations for Kwanzaa. Also decorations should include traditional African items, i.e., African baskets, cloth patterns, art objects, harvest symbols, etc.

However you celebrate your holiday be blessed

and know you are a part of the family of Man and of God.

We honor all cultures and all paths

Put positive energy into the Universe and the entire World

will Shine with the Light of being connected to each other in Love and Acceptance.

As I have declared before, we are all children of the Universe. We are interconnected. I am in the butterfly and the butterfly is in me. We are not only connected to each other but to every living thing. This meditation was written a long time ago and it helps us to recognize on the inner landscape, out true relationship with all that is living. I hope you will try it and see if it makes a difference.

“I am in everything and everything is in me.” —-Khabira

The beauty of spring in Western North Carolina. Photograph and copyright by Barbara Mattio, 2016

The aftermath of an attack in February on a United Nations camp for civilians in Malakal, South Sudan.

GENEVA — First they killed her husband. Then, the South Sudanese woman said, government soldiers tied her to a tree and forced her to watch as at least 10 of them raped her 15-year-old daughter.

A little more than two years after the outbreak of civil war in South Sudan, the United Nations said Friday that all parties to the conflict had committed serious and systematic violence against civilians, but it singled out forces loyal to President Salva Kiir as the worst offenders.

“Crimes against humanity and war crimes have continued into 2015, and they have been predominantly perpetrated by the government,” David Marshall, the coordinator of a United Nations assessment team, said in an interview that was videotaped in South Sudan and released Friday along with the team’s report.
The mother’s account to United Nations investigators of the rape of her daughter was among many stories cited by the United Nations as evidence that government forces and affiliated militias had used sexual violence systematically to punish and terrorize civilians. Opposition forces also committed atrocities, but to a lesser degree, the United Nations said.

“This is one of the most horrendous human rights situations in the world, with massive use of rape as an instrument of terror and weapon of war, yet it has been more or less off the international radar,” Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, said in a statement.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than two million forced to flee their homes since the start of the conflict between Mr. Kiir and his former vice president, Riek Machar, in December 2013, the United Nations said. The two sides agreed last August to set up a transitional government, but they have yet to do so.

In its 102-page report, the assessment team estimated that 10,553 civilians had died in Unity State in the 12 months that ended in November. Most appeared to have been killed deliberately, the team said.

The South Sudanese conflict intensified last year, particularly in Unity State, “where there has been a push by the government, both through the military leadership and the political leadership, to displace, kill, rape, abduct and pillage large portions of the civilian population,” Mr. Marshall said. “The consequence is that there has been much terror.”

Rights groups that have been expressing alarm about South Sudan for the past two years seized on the report to press their demands for a Security Council arms embargo and the establishment of a special war crimes court.

“While justice and an arms embargo alone will not solve this disaster, they are an essential contribution to ending the litany of appalling abuses against civilians,” said Jehanne Henry, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. Tom Andrews, a former United States congressman who is president of United to End Genocide in Washington, said: “The time for pleading and begging South Sudan’s government to implement a peace deal is over.”

The United Nations assessment team, which visited South Sudan between October and January, recorded detailed accounts of how civilians, including women and children, had been hanged from trees, burned alive, shot and hacked to pieces with machetes. Churches, mosques and hospitals came under attack, the team said.
The team said it documented more than 1,300 cases of rape between April and September in Unity State alone, and 50 more cases from September to October. Mr. al-Hussein said the numbers “must only be a snapshot of the real total.”

Government forces carried out most of the rapes in 2015, although in some cases, criminal gangs that have flourished in South Sudan’s prevailing lawlessness were involved, the team found.

Army-affiliated militias, made up mainly of youths, raped and abducted women and girls essentially as a form of payment, under an agreement that allowed them to “do what you can and take what you can,” the team reported. The militias stole cattle and other property under the same understanding, the team said.

Some women reported being taken as “wives” by soldiers and kept for sexual slavery in barracks where they were raped repeatedly. In some instances, witnesses said, attackers killed women who resisted them or even looked them in the eye, or who showed signs of being unable to withstand continued gang rape, the United Nations reported.

In one incident, witnesses saw soldiers arguing because one of them wanted to “take” a 6-year-old girl he thought was “beautiful.” Other soldiers eventually shot the girl, the witnesses said.

The United Nations team concluded that the violence it documented required a degree of preparation that suggested there was a plan to attack the civilian population. Attacks by the armed forces loyal to Mr. Kiir largely targeted members of Mr. Machar’s Nuer community, which is consistent with the government’s political objective of weakening its opponents and communities perceived as supporting them, the team said.

Critics of the government also became targets of state violence, the United Nations team said. Human rights activists, journalists and United Nations aid agency staff members were threatened, harassed, detained and in some instances killed, the team said.

One journalist, Peter Julius Moi, was shot dead in the capital, Juba, in June, only days after Mr. Kiir threatened to retaliate against journalists who reported “against the country.”

Another journalist, Joseph Afandi, who had written articles critical of the government, was found dead near a Juba graveyard earlier this week, according to the local news media, which reported that he appeared to have been beaten and burned. Mr. Afandi had been released in mid-February after two months of detention without charge.

“There needs to be a commitment to end the violence, and then there needs to be a commitment on meaningful accountability, to investigate, prosecute and punish the perpetrators,” Mr. Marshall said in his recorded interview.

But the reality is that “that can’t happen given that the machinery of violence is basically the state,” he added. “Both the military arm and the civilian leadership are part and parcel of the problem. They are orchestrating the violence against their own civilians.”

The United Nations report came as the world body’s Human Rights Council prepared to take up the South Sudan conflict. The council’s 47 members will vote this month on a resolution that is likely to call for the United Nations to appoint a special rapporteur to monitor developments there and report back to the council, according to diplomats engaged in negotiating the text.

So here we are, hearing stories of murder and rape during war. I think that the UN should stop rapes of women and girls.It is totally uncivilized to fight a war this way. Civilians do not often have a lot to do with the causes of war and yet they regularly pay the price.

I believe that it is an crime worse than murder. Rape, especially in the third world countries, takes a woman’s life away from her and she is still alive to watch how it unravels and disappears. Little girls, if they are not killed during the rape, often have serious physical and emotional injuries. Soldiers often use rifle butts and knives to commit the rapes. Fathers and brothers are many times made to watch. There have been reports of rapes among little girls as young as six years old.

Think about your daughters and granddaughters going through an experience like this. It is horrifying. The UN needs to intervene and punish all soldiers who commit rape and murder among innocent civilians. We must focus on our similarities and remember we are all children of the universe. We are star matter. Yes, you may have decided that you have a right to participate in war but nothing ever gives you the right to injure innocent citizens. Wars don’t accomplish anything; they destroy lives and countries. They are good for nothing. This depravity is despicable in the eyes of civilized peoples.

Since so many of us are house bound here in the states due to the wicked snow storms, I thought I would take you on a little trip, Up,UP, and Away. I found this to be amazing and thought you all might also. This trip is way cooler than anything you could be doing stuck inside because of the storms. Let me know if you enjoyed it.

Like this:

The American Museum of Natural History, in association with the Hayden Planetarium and the Rubin Museum of Art, has created a Digital Universe – a beautifully rendered graphic representation of the Universe as we have so far been able to discover it.

Watching this video made me think about all the things that divide human beings on Earth, and how truly petty they are. We are fighting wars and killing our planet, and we think that we have so much power; but when you compare us to the brilliance, the ordered chaos, the sheer beauty of the Universe and other Universes, the greediness, the hatred, the lack of compassion and lack of respect for life and the planet is so unimportant.
We are made of stardust. We are all as beautiful as the stars in any Universe.

Like this:

My nephew is coming through today. We planned to have breakfast together and then he would be on his way. His train is five hours late. I can’t get organized. It is a beautiful day and my mind keeps wandering. That and I pick up a book and read then set it down and am making a list as I am going away for the weekend. So I have decided that I am going to share my mind’s journey with you all. Fasten your seatbelts.

O God, forgive our rich nation where toddlers and school children die from guns sold quite legally.

O God, forgive our rich nation that let’s children be the poorest group of citizens quite legally.

O God, forgive our rich nation that lets the rich continue to get more at the expense of the poor quite legally.

O God, forgive our rich nation which thinks security rests in missiles rather than in mothers, and in bombs rather than babies.

O God, forgive our rich nation for not giving You sufficient thanks by giving to others their daily bread.

O God, help us never to confuse what is quite legal with what is just and right in Your sight.”

—Marion Wright Edelman

God’s Questions

God won’t ask what kind of car you drove, but will ask how many people drove who didn’t have transportation.

God won’t ask the square footage of your house, but will ask how many people you welcomed into your home.

God won’t ask about the fancy clothes you had in your closet, but will ask how many of those clothes helped the needy.

God won’t ask about your social status, but will ask what kind of class you displayed.

God won’t ask how many material possessions you had, but will ask if they dictated your life.

God won’t ask what your highest salary was, but will ask if you compromised your character to obtain that salary.

God won’t ask what you did to help yourself, but will ask how many people to whom you were a true friend.

God won’t ask what you did to protect your rights, but will ask what you did to protect the rights of others.

God won’t ask in what neighborhood you lived, but will ask how you treated your neighbors.

God won’t ask about the color of your skin, but will ask about the content of your character.

God won’t ask how many times your deeds matched your words, but will ask how many times they didn’t.

—Author Unknown

” A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” —Albert Einstein

Twilight on boat launch at Avon. Photographed and copyrighted by Barbara Mattio 2014

California Poppies. Another gift from Mother Nature.

Upper Waterfall in Letchworth State Park. The Genesee River has formed a gorge. We must take care of the gifts from Mother Earth.

We have to take care of our planet. It is more important than oil, money, arms, greed, jealously, bigotry, injustice, hatred and war. We must take care of Mother Earth. Our planet has changed greatly during just my lifetime. There is a supervolcano under Yellowstone National Park. If it blows, it will destroy most of America. Yet we continue fracking, mining, polluting the earth and the air. We must stop. To choose not to stop is to commit suicide.

Great Spirit

Great Spirit,

give us hearts to understand;

never to take

from creation’s beauty more than we give;

never to destroy wantonly for the furtherance of greed,

never to deny to give our hands for the building of earth’s beauty;

never to take from her what we cannot use.

Give us hearts to understand that to destroy earth’s

music is to create confusion,

that to wreck her appearance is to blind us to beauty;

that to callously pollute her fragrance is to make a house of stench;

that as we care for her she will care for us. Amen —U.N. Environmental Sabbath Program

Praying for Mother Earth.

Only a self-destructive species would do to our planet, what we have done.

Help Save a Child

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HANDS UP 4 JUSTICE APP

The Hands Up 4 Justice audio and video APP records encounters with law enforcement. This APP was created to video and audio record encounters with law enforcement for your safety. The best use of the APP once pulled over by the police, turn on the front facing camera and start recording..

Protests – Black Lives Matter

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KEEP EYES ON THE POLICE. NATIONAL POLICE VIOLENCE MAPPING TOOL.

Tool designed to help you hold Elected Officials accountable for police violence.

Hank Johnson Justice Fund

NO JUSTICE, NO MONEY
In the wake of the killings of unarmed black men and boys and the outrageous failure to prosecute their killers, Hank Johnson is introducing the Grand Jury Reform Act. This bill will prohibit the use of a grand jury when determining whether to prosecute a police officer in the event of a death. The status quo isn’t working. The evidence is clear. The people are demanding a real response from their elected leaders.

I am a retired widow with 4 kids and 9 grands. I worked as a nurse, and in Domestic Violence, and many non-profits, I was a donor health counselor for the American Red Cross and am a certified HIV counselor. I worked as a counselor and I have been a make-up artist and selling specialists for several American designers. I love life. I am very spiritual. I grew up in 50's and 60's and truly am the idealistic rebel which is the name of my blog. I love music, books, reading, Kindle, beauty. I am a photographer and an artist. I believe in making the world better one day at a time. I am now living in Asheville, NC.